carlos schwabe

I haven't done an art-related post in awhile, but I dig these works by Carlos Schwabe, German symbolist.

what is this thing called sleep

because I haven't gotten much, between dog-watching and summer-socializing. It's been overcast and stormy when it's not blissful which means it's easy to go to work and then the nights are cool and beautiful.  I got a text on my phone alerting me to extreme weather but all we got was some rain and a really swank lightning show. I think a lot of us were filming it and throwing it on Youtube, or at least this guy did.

Otherwise, there's a big pile of summer reading, the nephews are fun as anything, the powers that be are still absurd, and I feel like this whole season is slipping away all too quickly. And I've had this song on repeat for the whole week.

negasonic

If I believed in jinxes, I'd say I'd jinxed the Peonage, because the usual peeps are being wack as usual, between the politicking of bored women and the usual straunge ffolke and the general ennui of the weather changes.

We’re not interested in idle talk
(Wily Kataso!)
Sitting around too long ain’t good for people
Too much malicious gossip
Too many uncalled-for words
Talking too much clap-trap
I tell you
I said we’ve been sitting around too long

Talk talk talk a lot
And that’s all you’ve got
Thinking you know best
Give my ears a rest

Take your tired tone
And yourself back home
Now you’ve had your say
Move yourself away

Oh my goodness, the clownery is overwhelming. All those layers of power and general nastiness and fiefdoms and factions. I'm already running on four hours of sleep and all this isn't helping.

the good earth

I went on a walk with a friend around the corner, with her dog and the greenery of the trees in June, the welcome shade, the river, were welcome sights and a blessed escape and I mostly avoided anything political and volatile despite the thoughts inherent with unsurprising revelations and my amazement that others really don't seem nearly so bothered. I guess there have always been cassandras who warned about trojan horses and conquistadors and whatnot.

And it just felt so good to be outside, to deal with plants and neighbors and get my fingers dirty in the earth, lovingly insert plants into soil to grow, anticipating the rain, washing off the crustypunky patina from my skin and hair. I guess this is how we continue to survive, hovering between frustration and inevitable bliss.

best of the blotter: rednecks, crackers, and polka convention arsonists

DINE AND DASH, PEARL ROAD: A patron didn’t leave any cash to cover his $90 bill before leaving a restaurant at 11:55 p.m. May 21, but he did leave his phone number with a waitress. Officers planned to return to follow up on the situation.

DISTURBING THE PEACE, ROYALTON ROAD: A man was asked to leave Giant Eagle at about 3:30 p.m. May 20 after he was seen singing to the potted plants.
The man agreed to leave the store.

THEFT, DOULA DRIVE: A woman reported on May 20 that her mother’s lower dentures were stolen some time in early May.
The woman admitted that the dentures could have been lost or misplaced.

ROAD RAGE, PEARL ROAD: Apparently angry that another driver had blown her horn at them, two men in a Chevrolet truck with deer horns and “redneck” stickers on the back window threw garbage at her car through their window at 6:05 p.m. May 20. The woman then followed them into the Walmart parking lot, claiming that they had cut her off twice on the road. Both parties had different stories when officers arrived at the parking lot. The woman chose not to press charges against the men, but asked that officers advise them of their actions. Officers did, and both went on their ways.

RACIST DISTURBANCE, ROYALTON ROAD: The corner of Royalton and Prospect roads became the site of an impromptu white pride demonstration at 11:55 p.m. May 19. An employee at Sheetz called police and said at least five people had gathered in the corner of the parking lot, set up lawn chairs and were yelling “white power,” and customers were complaining.
When officers arrived, four or five pickup trucks were leaving.

Weekend at Bernie's' Situation

A motorist on I-71 reported May 26 that a passenger in a truck she was following on I-71 looked dead.

The truck exited on Royalton Road, and police stopped the vehicle in front of David's Bridal about 1:30 p.m.

"Everyone in the vehicle is alive and well," a report said.

Dispatchers called the woman back to let her know the passenger was fine.

Car Fire May Be Arson

A Vermilion man staying at the Holiday Inn for the recent polka convention came out to find his car on fire early May 27.
Janowski said a man pumping gas at the Shell station about 3:20 a.m. saw the car in the lot next door in flames.The fire appeared to start near the gas tank, indicating a possible arson, Janowski said.

The victim told police he had no idea who would target his car.

NEIGHBOR TROUBLE, SUNSET ROAD: A man said May 31 his neighbor yelled at him because she said he left a cup in the street. He said the cup was left by landscapers. He was told to call back if the neighbor gave him any more problems.

HARASSMENT, WALLINGS ROAD: At least one neighbor of St. Albert the Great has had enough of the church’s bells.
A woman confronted church officials numerous times this year to complain about the volume of the church bells and also contacted police about the issue.
At one point, the woman accused a church official of committing murder, because, she said, the church bells were killing her.
On May 31, the church received a postcard from an anonymous source complaining about the bells and pointing out that “I wouldn’t walk across the street to hear you perverts!”
While the church decreased the volume of the bells earlier this year, police have found no cause to alter them.

 Berea police escort woman from bingo hall

Berea police arrived at St. Adalbert parish Sunday about a bingo player who refused to leave the hall when asked.
The woman, according to the report, created problems for two weeks at the bingo games and was asked to leave. She said she would leave only if police told her to do so.
When police asked her to leave the facility, she said she did not have to and gave the officers her attorney’s name but not his phone number.
The woman finally agreed to leave the property if the officers made a report about the matter. Police then escorted her out of the bingo hall. She was told not to return to the facility.
The report also said another bingo player thanked police for their actions.

of riffs and rants

In the slow boil of dystopian creep, there are no secrets, there have been none for most of my adult life, everything is out there, or easy to find, especially when one has all the power and the analytics at one's disposal. It's creepy and disconcerting and my heart breaks for the wrongfully ensnared and my mind rages against the willful obliviousness because as long as we have the right bones thrown to us, it doesn't matter that we're being robbed as long as someone else we don't like is getting hurt more than we are. I could write so much more, but I've said it so often already, and others say it better, and willful ignorance or justification of the unjustifiable will never be palatable to me. .

And as I continue to say, that is our fundamental problem, our universal common denominator of suck, a lack of compassion, a lack of love for God and fellow human and created beings and the ground we walk on and the air we breathe.

Yet I distract myself, because I can't believe in survivalism either, because I want to love my neighbors and because every era of life has had its dehumanizing factors that need to be overcome, and there is so much beauty here still even in the midst of so much wrong and the best thing to do is not live in fear but continue to live.

I'm having friends over for dinner tonight, I'm figuring out how to fix my side-view mirror and realize I'm bereft of useful tools. While I was taking apart the contraption, I saw there was a goldfinch trapped in the netting of the cherry tree who seemed to have given up on life so I got a pair of scissors and cut him free and felt so uplifted watching it fly away.

 A homie from the station gave me some super amazing hot pepper plants and I provided him with cabbage and kale in return. There are flowers on my front porch now and vegetables on the back and I'm trying to figure out how to make my landlady's yard look less ugly in the front without really spending too much money.

I end up at a show last night, because this is my escapism, and there's not too many people there, a couple radio people that I don't know as well, so I get lost in the big riffs alone, amazed that I used to do these kinds of things without earplugs, or maybe it's just gotten louder. Like Randal, I dig the big riffs and the stoner rockery of Columbus dudes Lo-Pan. For those of us who grew up on classic rock and grunge in inner ring suburbs, it's satisfying and solid riffage with big excellent vocals that'd probably be on some modern rock rotation if the band was more photogenic and The Kids weren't all listening to dubstep. That being said, I'm glad they're getting love in the underground, and I enjoyed it enough to pick up a CD with a t-shirt thrown in.

Hipsters might disapprove of the accessibility but I'd go see these guys again and I infinitely preferred them to the next band that reminded me of the hardcore shows I used to go to as a teenager where it was trying to be intense and just ended up being uninteresting. The guys were young, so I guess I could cut them some slack, since it's not my thing at all.  If it wasn't so cold and I had some homies with me, I would have loitered outside for most of their set because despite their technical abilities, it didn't do much for me.

Torche on the other hand, loud and sludgy and strangely poppy and exuberant, was a different story, as they were the last time I saw them, unpretentious and unrelenting and constantly having to retune, but damn there's something so satisfying about loud crunchy guitars and dudes who can sing in this world of twee milquetoast indie and metallers trying to out-brootal each other. One dude who decided this would be a great time to start a moshpit, shoved me out of the way and proceeded to pummel everyone within five feet of him before realizing that no one else wanted to mosh at all and just wants to watch the band rock out and I didn't see him for the rest of the night and was backed up by a pair of heshers who stood behind me to get a better view of the band and insulate me from any hooliganery. Thanks guys for being chivalrous, I guess.

They started off with the first four songs off the last full length and a smattering of cuts from the previous records and ended with 'Harmonslaught' which might be one of my favorites.

Drove home listening to a fellow DJ play Black Flag bootlegs, it rained this morning and watered my plants, I need more coffee, and life continues in its strange way.

blood and roots

A late afternoon dentist appointment led to the discovery of a nice little fistula beneath one of yours truly's molars, which meant that yesterday morning was spent in the dentist chair rather than the office chair and there's a dull little throb there now. I guess it could be worse if it continued.

It hovered between rain and sun this weekend, and I hung out with the neighbors, slacked by the lake with my parents, and ended up at a baseball game where I watched the Indians lose of course. On the way back from the islands to Fair Clevelandia, the sky was that amazing combination of dark clouds and intense sunlight and at one point I was driving beneath this rainbow that started at the highway median and arched over into the farmland on the other side. It was so beautiful and I wish I could have stopped and snapped a shot to even try to express it but it's hard to do that kind of thing when there's no place to pull over.

As the swelling and the numbness went down, I ended up in the garden most of the day, rearranging and putting in everything that I hadn't gotten to before, with an in-law of one of my neighbors, who expounded on theories involving religion, homeopathic medicine, and the current state of affairs as a giant C-O-Nspiracy ala Dave Mustaine and Alex Jones, and while I can agree to some extent that things are really messed up in this world, I found myself inevitably punching holes in said narratives about conflict between people (because I believe that the Irish would still be mad at the English and that Shia & Sunni would still be going at it whether or not the CIA existed),  because while our meddling doesn't help, people seem to do a good job finding reasons to go to war with each other on their own.

I don't think the CIA or whoever is behind everything, or that they're poisoning the water/vaccinating us to self-destruct early/whatever. I'm sure that the building I work in and the computer I sit in front of and the cell phone I own aren't doing wonders for my health, but I don't know what the point is in living forever as it is.  It's not that what's going on isn't important, it's just that there's battles I don't see the need to fight and I figure that if the state wants you gone, it's pretty evident that the constitution these folks value so highly isn't going to be one's salvation or protection.

In theory we have similar religious leanings, but I wonder where the trust in God is when it's all about ME AGAINST THE MAN or how one heals oneself or flipping out so much about the guvvermint. I remember my dad saying something similar when some of his friends were going into survivalist mode for the inevitable Clintonian Martial Law Y2K Takeover and would argue about paying taxes and such, that last time he checked, first-century Rome was some lousy overlords and that the religious folk were generally law-abiding citizens paying taxes to an imperialist state that wasn't averse to setting them on fire or throwing them to beasts, and that they didn't run off to the woods with a bunch of weapons waiting for the end to come and for everyone to get theirs. So I listen, and occasionally interject, and the theories grow increasingly more bizarre, but it is what it is, and she is generous with her plants and who am I to judge.

So we get the garden plots done, I've got kale and tomatoes, eggplants and peppers and herbs, hills of squash and rows of beans waiting to germinate, a bucket full of Jerusalem artichokes by my back porch and flowers that will go somewhere, plants that I'm sharing with other enthusiasts for digging in the earth and growing things. 

And I wish I was out there instead of here, because there's something so life affirming about it, nurturing is so addictive. I have so many other things on my mind that social interactions get awkward because I'm less concerned about saving an old building on the other side of town, or the politics of fiefdomery, isn't life more than, food, isn't the body more than clothes? Especially when there's drones laying waste to other lands and people getting shot by cops and kids can't read. I don't know, I don't know what I'm trying to say here.